I Find Myself In August

I'm not even sure I care what's going on right now, but I'm also obsessed with it. I've fallen back into being lonely again, and I'm hoping its simply a temporary stumble back into it, but there I am.

Jane helped fix so much in me and now in my very next relationship, as it struggles, or at least I struggle with it, I fall right back to where I was. I did it tonight while consciously thinking "don't go on the internet", "don't look at Casual Encounters", "don't look at porn", "don't go look for kink on Instant Messenger". Successively I did it every step of the way like a crackhead.

I've suddenly slipped so far from being a content man, as my friend Jeff in Denver noted in May, back to a flailing sad little boy anxious for affection, or the flip side; that sordid confirmation of self indulgence through slutting it up.

This is exactly what Iron John is talking about, and MkP. The Sacred King and the Poisoned King. Both are very much a part of me, now what do I do about it? How do I eat that? How do I hold that by the throat when it so easily controls me?

I need to recognize it is not an "it" controlling me, that "it" is as much a part of me as my big toe, spleen, or face. I can't get rid of it, I need to find a way to honor it, and as Mikael says, show it love because it exists too. I have knowingly be fighting this seemingly small battle for at least 15 years and have been losing consistently.

Its what had me tied to stranger's headboards covered in cum, piss, and drool, and nearly gotten me raped several times. Its what finds me wasting entire days on my extreme lows beating off to internet porn. Its what has me circling over and over in the same relationship patterns. Fronting the best of my personalities for which ever girl I'm dating then cutting them off abruptly when I don't want to let them see me be disappointing. Its in this way I try to remain that great ex-boyfriend who never worked out in their future reminiscences. Its a way to keep them in Love with me.

What "it" is is loneliness. Loneliness is a lack of self worth, a massive blow to pride. I failed a test today, and tomorrow I'll be tested again. I'll be tested Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday too. Throughout the month, and months later another surprise quiz just to see.

So what is needing Love is my sense of self. This past year I've acquired the highest sense of myself I can remember, particularly after April's grueling trials and self probing. I was at the height of that high meeting Allie in the beginning of May. She lifted me beyond where I was and my own pillars fell because I never grounded them. When those affections dropped then they sank back to the very bottom to where I was before Jane routed all my relationship self defenses as they came at her. This explains my recent sudden desire to just get a grunt back room job at Safeway or McDonalds; to rebuild my cash for what I now see as the grand escape.

Only a few weeks ago, maybe even one week ago, heading to Peru was still a spiritual pilgrimage yearning to be completed. In fact, I was anxious to just go and see what that calling is, and complete my journey, so I could get back quickly to Allie again. Now it stands as a hollow exit from another broken home.

I noticed today in my thoughts none of my plans to return seemed satisfactory anymore. Massachusetts returned to looking like a broken wastelandscape. Living here seemed like a pathetic attempt to simply exist around Allie in the hopes to go back to being fuck buddies at least, or maybe friendly exes at best. Denver seemed equally unacceptable, just in the same way returning to New York has always felt. Like trying to reclaim glory days, but inevitably end up living there as a ghost of my former self three or four times over.

Writing this out now, however, I can feel myself finally grounding those pillars I stack my self evaluation on. Sitting here, in the Pacific northwest I've mulled around several options on how to make cash. It seems to be the Universe's favorite educational tool for me.

I've already dabbled back in my old standby for easy quick cash in the sex industry but was smacked in the face with a fitting, but shocking, roadblock. Rather than an easy bout of anonymous sexy time, I found myself suddenly in somewhat of a second relationship with a man, Doug. Money wasn't flowing in through this endeavor, instead he and I connected on a very spiritual level in which he shared several secrets of astonishing spiritual and alternatively hoodoo experiences he has only told four other close friends. We experimented with amateur energy work, breath work, and hypnosis resulting in him experiencing a vivid vision of me possibly on a high altitude lake with a man he named showing me something at sunset. I won't name him now to prevent the possibility of getting scammed when I do head abroad soon.

Sexy time for cash felt all wrong from the moment I started off doing it. In fact, sex in general has felt increasingly out of place since returning to the northwest in July. This, of course, also affects my relationship with Allie. I think in general this time up here is about finally truly battling that side of me and taking control of it.

My other work options I've been looking at have been, as I said before, the Safeway/McDonald's low thought, grunt work to just blow through approach. I looked at extreme hard labor, like delivering 100 pound crates of fish for 18 hour days, 9 days straight, in Alaska for high pay and to be able to claim a Hemingway/Bukowski experience. I've also looked into selling my photos and writing again on the high self worth end of the spectrum.

I go dollar to dollar now with a spartan number of days ahead at the coffee shop in Port Townsend. I look at these options I consider and see extreme waves of genuinely high self thought and low, very low, self appreciation. In the past 24 hours I've essentially cut off my interactions with everyone and taken refuge back in Port Townsend, having my sister's house alone to myself for the weekend to process where I am, where I'm going now.

I left Denver last April excited to explore but sad to leave. I want to leave here the same way. If $2,000 dropped in my lap tomorrow, however, I'd be turning tail and ducking out through a broken picket rather than marching off proudly once again. I've spent those first 15 and a half months filled with more life than I've ever had. Now challenged again by The Universe I have to fully address what it is I'm truly after; genuine strong connection with people again. Everyone say it together: Family.

Tonight I've found myself back to having cut everyone off from me. Every one from those I'm involved with now to those I haven't talked to in several months. Tomorrow, however, I get the chance to take up the gauntlet again and actually deal with the reality of human relations, with all its ups and downs.